Hi Team,
graphited string I guess would work as would the Teflon string sized packing mentioned above--I keep forgetting about the newer packing products as I still live in the past;;lol.

Maybe "packing medium of your choice" would suffice.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

actually most modern packing is made from teflon cord anyway. just impregnated with graphite or similar.

neil yest that would work. just dont use graphite packing on stainless steel shafts it etches into the stainless use the plain white stuff instead

The good news; I did a field repair on the fuel shut off. dental floss and a small amount of permatex thread dope. seemed to work! no leaks.
The bad news is; took out the mag, filed the points,reset gap.had spark on the bench .reinstalled. pony ran for 5 minutes then it shutdown.as soon as it shutdown I checked spark,checked good. I took the filter out of the fuel bowl and soaked in berrymans carb cleaner for two hours. no change.going to one attempt to adjust carb one more time before removing again. the saga continues..........

Sounds like a fuel flow issue to me, I had my RD4 pony do a similar thing, couldn't get it to fire off properly, so I removed the fuel tank and gave it a good clean with a handful of nuts and some diesel sloshing around, refit it and all was good, went plowing for the day, next morning went out to start the pony and had the same fuel flow issues as before, pony just wouldn't fire off, take the tank off again and discover the outlet hole of the tank choked with fine rusty dust again.

I ended up giving it a acid bath with citric acid and then sealing it with Redkote, had another fuel tank on a 22 that had a delivery docket from 1972 sitting in the bottom of the tank, the tractor would start great and run fine for 5 minutes or a hour, but then suddenly just die. It took me almost 2 days of pulling the carb apart several times, plus the fuel pump and fuel lines, before I got lucky and spotted the folded up piece of paper neatly blocking the outlet hole!!!

What a nightmare, interesting thing was you could read the writing on the paper like it was written yesterday, and see all the pucker marks on the paper from where it had blocked the outlet hole over the years, that tractor was used regularly for farming sugar cane up until around 2000, so the previous owner had 30 years of that tractor just suddenly quitting for no obvious reason.

When it quit on you, if you walked off and came back a hour later it would fire straight up and run sweet like there was never a problem, till that piece of paper found it's way back over the outlet hole!!

that would have pissed me off no end. but sometimes the simple thing is the cuase. but wierd the ink didnt dissolve normally fuel will dissove most inks

so the saga continues.... Checked the flow of the fuel line.drained the tank with no flow issues.I took the carb back apart.soaked the cast iron throat section in berrymans over night. found a small amount of gunk in the passageway above the idle adjustment screw. could not find any info on it ,but has a small hole that exits into the throat right near the choke plate. pretty sure that has nothing to do with my issue as I believe that would be part the idle circuit. rechecked the main jet needle adjustment bracket and is still at 90 deg. and checked the function seems to lift the needle ok.Blew air thru all the passageways and all seem clear.ran a wire inside them as well as I could and it came out clean. reassembled for the unpteenth time. pony started right up and ran for almost 2 minutes then started backfiring and quit. will not start,but wants to start with full choke.If I let it sit for a couple hours I can restart it with the same results. I am convinced its a fuel starvation issue. the only thing I havent done is drill out the plugs and run a drill bit thru the passageways mentioned in this forum. I have very little hair left to pull out. I am ready to buy a rebuilt carb if this last ditch effort doesnt work. anything I may have missed?? Bryan

Hi Team,
it is not unknown for a faulty magneto condenser/capacitor to run giving quality sparks when cold and then start to fail and cause little to no or intermittent spark as the magneto/condenser warms up---then if left to cool off it will start again and fail as the heat soaks thru the magneto each time.

The magneto can be run with on a bench with the plugs fitted and earthed to the magneto body--steel work bench and vice come to mind--and be driven by an electric drill in the correct direction of rotation at a sensible speed, say 600-800 RPM--some heat sparingly applied with a hair drier or heat gun to the magneto metal case away from the cap whilst observing if the spark fails as the heat builds up in the magneto or simply fit a new condenser as a matter of course.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

It's never one thing in my experience. 
A sticky needle and seat wouldn't help.
my pony has  zero vent through fuel cap and a sticky needle and seat, but runs like the day it was new because I run it with the fuel cap off.
I also have to pressurise the fuel tank slightly before initial start up.
starts first pull.
Carb has been fully rebuilt which helps obviously. 

I wish that I had read this thread earlier! I went thru some issues with a pony that I decided to mess with. Decided to make it run better by doing practically everything the original poster did, only to make things WORSE! LOL. I am laughing now, as I got pretty good at removing the pony fuel tank, lines and carb repeatedly...Ugh!
Long story short, I got annoyed and built another carb from a box of spare parts... ran for 15 seconds just like the old one. should have removed the entire body from the pony to give it a proper cleaning, as I am guessing I finally freed up something I may have disturbed? Gremlins? Never had a pony fight me on running until yesterday.
I hope the original poster gets his working proper, and I hope mine stays running as well!
I will read the info from Eddie B. again, and maybe some of it will stick in my brain.
Thank you for sharing the info. Every little bit helps! JM